General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Today’s INCREDIBLY Easy to Make Predictions [View all]Blanks
(4,835 posts)Hydrogen isn't the answer. Unless you're talking about the hydrogen in methane gas.
Harnessing the methane gas in our waste is the way to go. The folks fighting for a 'hydrogen economy' are fighting to keep the people who are in control of our energy supply in control of our future energy supply.
The technology is available for converting waste to methane - the only thing missing is storage. Methane is also a greenhouse gas, and even if we cut CO2 emissions and did nothing about methane we'd still find ourselves in trouble - because unlike CO2 methane is lighter than air. As far as I know the technology for the hydrogen economy is still in development whereas countries like India have been using methane gas for quite a while.
That's just my 2 cents worth. Of course you're right on solar, but I'd rather see more CSP (concentrated solar power) -as well as solar panels because I think we could use more readily available materials to create CSP and it could be used on a small scale system where something like methane gas was used in hours of darkness to generate electricity and CSP during the daytime. It's basically evaporated water driving turbines - just needs a heat source.